It is a common technique to provide diapers or feminine hygiene articles with fastening tabs. Such fastening tabs allow an adjustable connection of different areas of the diaper or the hygiene article in order to ensure a firm and comfortable fit at the human body. For this purpose, the fastening tabs are usually provided with an adherent layer, e.g., in the form of a hook-and-loop fastener, a pressure sensitive adhesive layer or the like.
During the fabrication of such hygiene products, the tab material is usually provided as a continuous material web, which is subsequently cut into singular tabs. In the next step, these tabs are spacially separated from each other and adhered to desired areas of the hygiene product raw material.
It is always desirable to increase the production velocity of such hygiene articles as far as possible. However, the handling of the tabs is a limiting factor in that context. It is a known problem that the lightweight fastening tabs may fly around in the machinery as soon as the rotation velocity of the transportation cylinders becomes too high, due to the airflow caused by the rotation. This may lead to malfunction of the machinery as well as missing or incorrectly positioned fastening tabs on the hygiene products, in other words, it may lead to production loss.
To overcome these problems, it is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,527 (Traise) to transport the individually cut fastening tabs immediately after cutting to a vacuum cylinder from which they are positioned on the diaper raw material. However, vacuum cylinders are very expensive. Moreover, they are not adapted for properly receiving all forms or structures of fastening tabs, especially tabs having a rough structured surface, like hook tabs. In addition, the transportation of tabs covered with a pressure sensitive adhesive on both sides might is also very problematic, because the tabs stick to the vacuum cylinder and are difficult to remove.